


gray

by ansley15



Series: heat-verse [4]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Other, Polyamory, Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-19
Updated: 2011-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-22 19:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ansley15/pseuds/ansley15
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in your darkest hours, we shall be there to guide you home. A mission causes Kirk to dream of Tarsus IV's aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gray

I am a captain of a star ship (not a child) and I am in a bright mood.

 

Gray was that summer. Gray was that child. Gray was me cauterizing my brain on memories, the nebulous gray haze of childhood humiliating me to blasphemy. In autumn hours I had been so holy, a virginal thing aquiver with star fleet and the present. I worshipped at the alter of the Almighty Great Adventure. Now-I am a whore for years past.

 

In the daytime it's okay to be callous about everything. But in the dark, come years before. They slip on me like gray Septembers.

 

I am curled by pulsing memories; fragments which twist, which cling. Infinitely precise, infinitely vague-I know the faces all by name. And I saw a dead child today. She lay face down-features skidded against concrete, hair a tangled tawny bloody mane. First time I saw someone die, I thought to myself “This feels like a movie.” So real like a movie.

 

She thuds as my boot flips her face-up. My face in her dusky pupils; her face back in mine. Our flat eyes ping-pong off another in infinite reflection back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and...Raging alight with bare legs I vault, over the screaming and shrieking and stars I caress some nights I shocked my mother by throwing fits when winter edged its way into my world and I am not scared I am not scared I am not scared-

 

At thirteen they thought I tried to kill myself because I refused to break for quarries. But God knows I knew right then and there I didn't take shit from nothing.

 

“My father blew himself up the minute I was born,” I had told my psychiatrist. “I was born with the goddam suicide genes.”

 

And in lukewarm summers in the golden hours, sanity descended. With a clear mind I saw the world. I studied hard. I made good grades. For my thirteenth birthday, my mother gave me a bright red bike and cooked me my favorite meal.

 

The mashed potatoes were white and fluffy as clouds. But in the dim light, they were gray as leaking brains gushing in froth from a new-cracked skull.

 

My fingers rammed hard inside my ears. Eyes squenched tight, I screamed.

 

()()()

 

A pillow presses cool into my face. A blanket sticks to my sweaty back and clings to me as I tremble.

 

Four hands stroke up and down my spine.

 

“Shussssh. It's okay,” she whispers, kissing my chest as his smoldering lips tease my earlobes.

 

“Fear not, ashayam,” he breathes into my skin. “You were suffering a nightmare which ails you no longer.”

 

“We're not going anywhere, Jim. We're here. Always.”

 

“Affirmative.” His lips slid now to my shoulder blade as hairy arms snake about my waist. Now, softer-”Affirmative.”

 

They tangle themselves about me. Buried in their skin, I breathe. The honeysuckle scent of her. The coppery bitter bright of him. Into the softness, I slip. I inhale her thick hair as his fingertips cup my temple.

 

“Sleep.”

 

I wake to gentle bodies and a universe of arms. The blanket is pulled over our heads. Through the sheets the light seeps gray, dove soft and gentle as a dawn.


End file.
